Politics President Biden says a Russian invasion of Ukraine 'would change the world' But there was always a concern about Ukraine,' Goldgeier said. It's one thing for Poland to come in, or the Czech Republic to come in.

'The Russians were always concerned about how far NATO enlargement was going to go. In the three decades since, NATO expansion has put four members on Ukraine's borders. Ukraine, as the largest former Soviet republic in Europe besides Russia itself, has been a key part of alliance talks since it declared independence from the USSR in 1991.

'Obviously, the more it did to stabilize the situation in central and Eastern Europe and bring them into the West, the more it antagonized the Russians,' he said. Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, NATO expanded three times: first to add the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland then seven more countries even farther east, including the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and finally with Albania and Croatia in 2009. World Americans should back Ukraine's fight against Russia, former wartime leader says looking to cement its influence in Europe and for countries emerging from communist control, like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the NATO expansion question became more urgent - both for the U.S. 'And that's sort of factually accurate in a narrow sense, but it doesn't reflect the reality of the treaty.' Why did the West want to enlarge NATO, and how did Russia react? Still, to this day, Putin is saying, 'Look, there was this other offer on the table, right?' ' Sarotte said. 'But there's this residual bitterness afterwards. What is not in dispute: Gorbachev later agreed to withdraw from East Germany in exchange for financial concessions, in a treaty that did not place limits on the future expansion of NATO. Contemporaneous notes, letters, speeches and interviews show that Western leaders were, in fact, already contemplating NATO enlargement by the time the February 1990 talks took place, she says. The historical record shows otherwise, according to Sarotte. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as recently as Friday that 'nobody was even imagining Czechoslovakia or Poland or Hungary at that time.') officials and Gorbachev made years later do not help clear this up. Some say that when Baker suggested that NATO shift not 'one inch' to the east, he intended to refer only to East Germany, because neither side had begun to think about NATO expansion beyond that. There is some disagreement about what took place during the Baker-Gorbachev talks in February 1990.

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